Roseyland

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to Italy day 4. This is the midpoint of our adventure, and today’s agenda includes the Galleria Borghese and a tour of the ancient roman ruins. We had 11:00 am reservations for the Galleria Borghese, so we were able to sleep in a little bit longer. The Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a villa, inside a park. Now here is where I get confused, sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the park in which the Galleria Borghese is located, and sometimes Villa Borghese refers to the Villa, which contains the Galleria Borghese. Basically, Galleria Borghese is an art gallery, inside a large fancy house (or Villa), which is located in a big park, that is something like central park.

We arrived at the Villa Borghese a little early, so that we could check out the park part of Villa Borghese. This park was one of my favorite parts of Rome. It had lots of winding paths, and different fountains and statues hidden all over the place. There were lots of runners, and it felt very peaceful for being inside a big city. The fountain below is somewhere inside the Villa Borghese park.

We were in Rome during the World Cup, but by this time Italy had already been eliminated. It looked like a part of Villa Borghese had been set up as some type of World Cup watching party, but as you can see, the party was long over and the place was covered in trash. Looks like it was a good party though.

This is the Asclepius Temple. It’s a temple, on an island, in a lake, in the park. There were also ducks. It was very pretty.

These are the gardens behind Villa Borghese, and this time I mean the Villa that contains Galleria Borghese. I want to say something like, “Hey, check out that statues butt”, but I’m afraid you’ll get the wrong idea.

This is a water spout. They have these all over Rome, and people use them to fill up their water bottles and splash water on themselves. Which is nice, because the summer is hot in Rome. In case you are wondering, you can drink the water in western Europe. I always say that I’m going to stick to bottled water, because even though the tap water is perfectly clean, it’s still possible that your body will need an adjustment period. I always end up drinking tap water by the first day though, and so far I have suffered no ill effects.

This is the Galleria Borghese, in the Villa Borghese, that is the big house and not the park. I’m not a huge art fan, but this gallery is nice for a couple reason. First, they only let people in with a reservation. Every two hours, they let a set number of people in for two hours, so that the gallery isn’t packed with people. The other nice thing is that this is a smaller gallery. It’s basically a villa filled with art, and there aren’t many barriers between you and the art. You can get right up close to some amazing statues. One of these statues was Apollo and Daphne, in which Daphne is being chased by Apollo and is turning into a tree for one reason or another. In the statue, her legs are starting to become part of the tree, and there are these leaves sculpted out of marble that are just unbelievable. The leaves are so thin, but they are marble. It doesn’t seem possible. Click on the link for a picture. If you visit the Galleria Borghese, you might consider getting an audio guide. They have cards you can read in English, but I find it hard to read and look at art at the same time. Of course like almost all art museums, you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside. I used the same website to make reservations for the Galleria Borghese as I did for the Galleria Academia and the Galleria Uffizi in Florence, which you can find here.

After the Galleria Borghese, we had lunch at the galleria’s bar. You remember that bar in Italy means something like counter service restaurant, right? Then we headed to the ancient roman ruins area where we took another Context Travel tour of the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum, and Colosseum. The tour we took was the Roma Antica tour, and just like the Vatian tour, it was excellent. Usually, I’m not big on tours. I’d generally prefer to explore on my own, but when it comes to something like the Vatican or ancient Rome, you really kind of need someone to explain it all to you. And again, the small group format of the Context Travel tours is way better than the larger group tours, in my not so humble opinion.

We started our tour at the Palatine Hill. The Palatine hill is the most ancient part of Rome, and it is where the most well off ancient roman citizens, including a few emperors, lived. I would like to take this moment to point out that I do not guarantee the accuracy of any information in these blog post. This is just what I remember, it could totally be wrong. The picture below is of an aqueduct that provided water to the Palatine Hill. It’s thousands of years old.

Here is a picture of the colosseum as seen from the Palatine Hill. I love those trees, they are so ancient Rome.

Here is a picture of the ruins on the Palatine Hill with the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. Yeah, awesome shot, I know. I learned a few things on this part of the tour that I’d like share with you at some point. How about now? First, the ancient Roman ruins were completely buried until the 1950’s. Initially treasure hunters started digging in the area for artifacts they could sell, and soon after that the government stepped in to protect the artifacts and excavate the ruins. Everything you see in these pictures had been completely buried until relatively recently. Second, you know all those white marble statues you expect to see in an ancient Roman palace? They were not white. They were carved out of marble, which was white, but then they painted them to have clothes and skin, etc… They were full color statues. Weird. The ancient Romans also had many modern conveniences, like running water and under floor heating. I’d love to tell you all about it, but you really need to go to Rome and take the tour yourself.

Now we are entering the Roman Forum area. This was the center of government for ancient Rome. Something like Washington D. C. The picture below is of an arch. Our guide told us that arches represented the open legs of a woman. Seriously. When soldiers would come back to rome after doing all sorts of bad things, they would walk through the arch to symbolize a rebirth and be forgiven for their transgressions. I will never look at the Gateway Arch the same way again.

This is an original road in the Roman Forum area. Actual ancient Romans walked on this road. I touched it, because other people were touching it, and it seemed like the thing to do.

Here is a good overall view of the Roman forum area. One thing to note, this area was in use for hundreds of years, and all of these buildings were built at different times. So you are looking at a hodgepodge of buildings from different times in this shot.

Another shot from inside the Roman Forum.

This is location where Caesar was cremated. There is a big story around Caesar’s death. It goes something like: Caesar was emperor, the people loved him, the senate did not, the senate had him assassinated, the people were outraged, and there was a big funeral where Caesar was cremated. You’ll have to take the tour if you want the full and accurate version. As you can see, people still leave flowers and notes for Caesar today.

After the Roman Forum, we headed to the Colosseum. You have probably seen the movie Gladiator, and you pretty much know what the Colosseum was. Gladiators used to fight here, and sometimes criminals were punished here. Also, the Colosseum was not buried for a couple thousand years like the other ruins we have seen so far.

This is a picture of the pathway you can walk on inside the Colosseum.

This is a cross inside the Colosseum. I don’t know why it’s there exactly, but I suspect that many Christians were sent to their death in the Colosseum, and the cross is probably a memorial to them.

Here is a good shot of the inside of the Colosseum. See the small section of floor that has been built at the opposite end? That is the level of the original floor of the Colosseum. What you see in the bottom now are the areas underneath the floor where they would keep various animals (lions, tigers, etc…). There were also numerous trap doors in the floor, and the animals could be sent to pop up from any one of them, for the Gladiators to fight. They could also flood the whole area for naval battles. I almost said navel battles, hee hee.

Hey look! It’s a cat in the Colosseum. He seemed to have somewhere very important to go, and was not interested in stopping for a picture.

After our tour we headed to the Spanish Steps for dinner. We wanted to eat at a restaurant called Hostaria Al, which is supposed to have this amazing shrimp risotto, but they were closed for vacation. Instead we ate at a restaurant called Da Giggi, which had a hillarious waiter named Kiko. You should go see him, he will make you order the lasagna, and it will be very good.

That is all for today. Only two days left. Tomorrow we travel to the small hilltop town of Orvieto. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

I was going to tell you all about Villa Borghese and the ancient Roman ruins today, but who wants to hear about that? Instead, we can talk about politics, everyone loves politics. I made the mistake of listening to the radio the other day, and they were talking about something called Prop C. According to the voices on my radio, a vote for Prop C will save freedom, strengthen families, and prevent the impending socialist take over of our country. Awesome! I’ll take two.

Being slightly more serious for a second, you can read a good summary of Prop C at Ballotpedia.org here. Make sure you read the opposition section. I know it’s all the way at the bottom, but you can do it. Basically Prop C bans the government from mandating that individuals purchase health care or penalize individuals for not purchasing health care. Prop C is mainly a protest vote against the recently passed federal healthcare reform bill, and since federal law trumps state law, Prop C will accomplish little, if it passes.

If the Prop C supporters want to make it more interesting, they should propose a law that forces employers to reimburse employees who opt out of their employer provided group health care. I get great health insurance through my employer, and I feel very fortunate to have it. According to my employer, my health insurance cost around $450 a month. I pay none of that. I could opt out of the coverage, but I would not get to keep any of the $450. So basically my employer mandates that I either accept their group health care plan or I am essentially fined $450. Prop C aims to prevent the government from doing this to you, but if Prop C supporters were truly sincere in their intentions, they would also ban employers from mandating health care.

I know what you are thinking, you can choose your employer, so it’s not the same thing. I can see that point, but I highly doubt I could find comparable employment with a company that didn’t also effectively mandate health care coverage. Companies do this, because it’s a good plan. It provides excellent affordable health care to all employees and their families regardless of medical history or preexisting conditions. Is there anybody out there that doesn’t want this? Would you rather have an extra few hundred dollars in your paycheck and tell your coworker’s kid with asthma to suck it? Because that is what you would be doing, and it’s exactly what Prop C attempts to do.

I absolutely believe that group health care plans in the United States offer the best health care in the World. Unfortunately, a lot of people can’t get into a group plan and are denied coverage or have to pay much more for much less. We need to ensure that every citizen of this country can benefit from the structure and protections of group health care plans, and the only way to do this is to mandate health insurance. I don’t like being told what to do by the “guvermint” any more than anybody else, but your “freedom” to not have health insurance is also your freedom to go into medical debt bankruptcy and pass your debt on to society, or your freedom prevent someone who really needs it from obtaining coverage. I don’t want these freedoms.

In summary, Prop C is dumb, vote against it.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Today is a big day, we are going to Florence. I’ve wanted to go to Florence since I took art history in college. I looked back over my college papers, and it turns out I even wrote a paper on the subject of David from Donatello to Bernini. I totally don’t remember writing this paper, but you can read it here. If by chance you are a college student, I have some free advice for you. You probably have to take some type of upper level elective outside of your major. Take art history. I know what you are thinking, history is boring and I’m not into art. Wrong. Art history is like history with pictures, which is way better than regular history. Anyways, we spent a lot of time talking about Florence in my art history class, and I’ve wanted to see it ever since, and now I have.

Okay, so this is day 3 in Italy. We got up, took the metro to the train station, and took the train to Florence. The train was very nice. If you are traveling between major cities in Europe, you often have two choices. You can take a direct train between the two cities or a regional train that makes a few stops between the cities. The direct train is more expensive, but it’s a faster and nicer train. I’d go with the direct route if I were you. I’d also splurge on first class, because it isn’t that much more money, and it’s less crowded. The train got us to Florence in about one and a half hours, and we headed straight to the Galleria Accademia. If you are going to Florence, especially in the summer, you will want to make reservations to see the Galleria Accademia and the Uffizi Gallery. If you don’t, you will either not see them, or spend all day waiting in line. I used this website to make reservations, but I’ve heard that hotels can make them for you too.

The Galleria Accademia is where you can see Michelangelo’s David. You are not supposed to take pictures inside this museum. I did not know this, so I took out my camera, and took a picture of David. Then I realized that nobody else was taking pictures, which seemed odd, and then I saw the “pictures are strictly forbidden” sign. Unlike the Sistine Chapel, people seemed to be obeying the rules here, so I did too. From that point on at least.

After seeing Michelangelo’s David, the plan was to check out the Duomo, which is the big cathedral right in the middle of Florence. The line was super long though, so we skipped ahead to lunch. This was the only time I think we made a bad dinning choice. It was really hot, so we kind of just picked the first place we saw, and the food wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good, and it ended up being one of our most expensive meals for so-so food. We should have realized this, because the place had tourist trap written all over it, but unfortunately the heat had impaired our judgement. The picture below is of the Duomo, we’ll go inside later.

After lunch, I climbed to the top of Giotto’s bell tower, which is the bell tower right next to the Duomo. I love climbing to the top of domes and bell towers in places like Florence. It’s fun, because you have this mini shared experience with a bunch of other tourist from all over the world. I like trying to guess where the other people are from, and then sometimes you’ll say something in english as you are passing somebody, and if they speak english, there is this moment where you realize each other speaks english, and yeah, I’m a dork. It’s also a lot of work climbing these towers, so you get a nice sense of accomplishment and some great views. Here is a picture of the steps in Giotto’s bell tower.

Here is a platform partway up the bell tower. It was nice that the bell tower had these, because it gave you a place to rest. Most of the domes don’t have a lot of places to rest on your way up.

Here is a grate where you can look all the way down the center of the bell tower. Nice shoes.

Here is a view of the Duomo’s dome from the top of Giotto’s bell tower with florence in the background.

This is the platform on top of the bell tower. I kind of felt like a gerbil being inside the little tunnel cage.

After I climbed down from the bell tower, we went to the Uffizi gallery where we had reservations, which like I said earlier, you need. The Uffizi gallery is a world famous art gallery, and it was pretty cool, but you can’t take pictures inside. I did take this picture of the Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi gallery though. The Ponte Vecchio is a bridge over the Arno river in Florence. The bridge contains a number of gold shops, we’ll go there a little later.

After the Uffizi gallery, we headed back to the Duomo to see the inside. The line was shorter this time, and it actually rained a little. It felt good though, considering how hot it was. See that building with the gold doors? That is the Baptistery, which is basically a mini church in front of the Duomo where they used to baptize people, and maybe they still do, I don’t know. The gold doors are the Gates of Paradise by Ghilberti. The doors on the baptistery now are just a replica of the original doors, which are now in a museum. These doors are one of the things from my college art history class that I really wanted to see.

This picture is a little out of order. First we went into the main level of the Duomo. It was very pretty, but dark, and my pictures didn’t come out all that great. Also, being that this is a church, they want you to be quite, and every few minutes, this creepy deep recorded voice says “Silenzio” followed by “Silence”. It was scary. After we saw the main level, I went to climb the dome, because as we discussed, I like climbing stuff. I took the picture below of the inside of the Duomo on my way up the dome. Look at the people below, they are so tiny, somebody should feed them more.

Here are some of the steps on the way up the dome. See, how cool is that, just think how old these steps are and how many people have climbed them. Are there any domes I can climb in St. Louis? I miss it.

Here is a view from the top of the Dome. Notice the hills in the background. They are covered with houses. I would like one.

This is the platform on the top of the Dome. I took some time to sit up here, relax for a bit, and send some SMS messages, which cost 50 cents a piece from Italy by the way.

After the climbing down from the Dome, we headed to the the Ponte Vecchio. Hey look, it’s a picture of me on the Ponte Vecchio. People are always like, why don’t you ever take any pictures of yourself, and I still don’t really understand why I would want to, but here I am, standing on a bridge, in Italy. Like I said earlier, the Ponte Vecchio is filled with gold shops. If you aren’t interested in gold, like me, the bridge also has nice views over the river Arno.

After the Ponte Vecchio we had dinner in Piazza Vecchio and then headed to the train station to catch our train back to Rome. Here is a picture of the tracks in the Florence train station. Cool picture huh?

The train ride back to Rome was nice. We sat next to an american couple who had been in Italy for 10 days. It was interesting to hear their stories. Also, on the train we were given olive flavored crackers. I thought they were okay. A few people have asked me whether I liked Rome or Florence better, and of course this isn’t really an answerable question. Rome has so much to see and do, but it’s also a big big city with a definite rat race feel to it. Florence on the other hand is smaller, and is more laid back and relaxing. Florence was also nicer and cleaner. I would much rather live in Florence and I do wish I had a few more days to just hang out there. Tomorrow we visit the Galleria Borghese and take a tour of the ancient roman ruins. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Welcome to day number 2 of the Roseyland Italian adventure. You have of course read day 1 already, if not, use the link above and go read it. Do not read day 2 without reading day 1, just don’t. Today is our first full day in Rome and there is only one item on the agenda. Touring the Vatican. Before we left, my aunt and uncle (who had just been to Rome) convinced us that we had to take a Context Travel tour of the Vatican. I had always planned to take a tour of the Vatican, but I was planning on taking one of the larger group tours. The Context tours seemed a little expensive and overly academic to me. I’m so glad I changed my mind. Context tours have a maximum of 6 people on their tours, and your guide knows everything about the Vatican, and I mean everything. It’s like strolling through the Vatican with your good professor friend that loves to answer questions. The larger group tours would be okay, but they are groups of around 30 people, and that wouldn’t be so bad, but there are like 30 groups of 30 people all trying to shuffle their people from place to place while they recite their script. I’m probably being a little too hard on the larger group tours, but the Context tour really was excellent. If you spent all that money to go all the way to Rome, spend a little more on the Context tour, and no, I’m not getting compensated in any way to say this. In case you are wondering, we took the Arte Vaticana (with Reservation) tour.

We met our guide in a bar (think coffee bar) just outside the Vatican museums entrance. There were three other people on our tour, a husband, wife, and son from Massachusetts (I think). They were nice. The husband liked to take lots of pictures, like me. I wonder if he has a blog. Anyways, we entered the Vatican and our guide gave us a good overview of the Vatican and it’s history. The we walked out on this terrace that was absolutely beautiful. It overlooked the Vatican gardens and you could see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. You can’t tell from the picture, but that dome is huge, and by huge, I mean really really big.

Here is a picture from a courtyard inside the Vatican Museums. See that sphere in the middle? That sphere used to sit right between the World Trade Center towers. I don’t remember the story, but somehow it survived 9/11 and now it lives at the Vatican.

The Vatican museums are filled with priceless art. This statue is apparently very famous. Of course I don’t remember it’s name, but I believe it was an ancient greek statue had been lost for hundreds of years but was still well known among ancient Roman artist. Then it was unearthed and people flocked to see it. I probably butchered that story, but the point is, this statue is kind of a big deal. He should probably be wearing sunglasses.

Here is a hallway in the Vatican museums. Very beautiful building, lots of people.

Ohhhh. This is one of my favorite parts. This is a Vatican parking lot. This is where people who work at the Vatican park. See anything unusual? There is a big yellow Hummer in the parking lot. Who at the Vatican drives a Hummer?!? Doesn’t that break a vow or two? And don’t say, “I bet it’s the Pope’s!”. That joke is far to easy to be funny.

This is the School of Athens by Raphael. I had just finished reading Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King, which talked all about the painting of the Sistine Chapel and the rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael. The book also talked about Raphael’s paintings in the Papal apartments, and they sounded very cool, but I didn’t think I’d get to see them, because I figured the Pope still lived there. Turns out he moved a while back, and you can go see them. Hurray! I actually liked this painting more that the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but that might just be because you can get closer to it.

Here is the famous Sistine chapel ceiling. The picture is a little blurry, because you aren’t supposed to take pictures and I had to be all sneaky. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. There were a few hundred people in the Chapel, half of whom are taking picture after picture and then the guards in thick Italian accents say, “No Phoooto… No Veedeo…”. On top of that, supposedly the only reason you can’t take pictures of the ceiling is because the images are copyrighted by the Japanese company NHK who funded the restoration of the ceiling, and supposedly that copyright has run out, so you can take pictures of the ceiling. It’s just that nobody has told the guards.

This is the official staircase of the Vatican. It’s what heads of state use when they visit and it leads up to the Sistine chapel.

This is the inside of St. Peter’s basilica. This building is huge, it’s as long as two football fields and ridiculously beautiful.

This is the alter of St. Peter’s basilica which sits directly under it’s massive dome.

Here is picture from St. Peter’s square in front of St. Peter’s basilica. See the building in the background with all the windows? The three right most windows on the top row are where the Pope lives and works.

Another shot of St. Peter’s square, this time with St. Peter’s basilica in the background.

Our tour concluded in St. Peter’s square, and just to mention it one more time, it was awesome. I learned so much that I could probably pretend to be catholic now. Our guide mention a couple things on our tour that were not about the Vatican, but have stuck with me. First he talked about the difference between the cultures of northern and southern Europe. Basically he said that the germanic cultures (Germany, the Netherlands, The UK, etc…) tend to be very orderly and structured cultures. On the other hand, the romance language countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc…) tend to be more chaotic and less structured. I think I experienced this last year when I went from London to Paris. I really liked London and I felt very comfortable there almost instantly. Paris on the other hand was a shock to my system. While I loved Paris, it felt very out of control to me. At the time I chalked this up to not understanding the language, but now I think it’s a deeper cultural issue too. Supposedly the U.S. is more like the germanic countries. I’ll have to test this theory with a trip to Germany. Rome was chaotic like Paris, but the people were friendlier, so it didn’t shock me as much. Either that or I’m just more used to it now.

The other thing our guide said that has stuck with me is that the European cultures are at serious risk of going extinct. The birth rates in most European countries are around 1.8 births per woman. 2.1 births per woman is the rate needed to maintain a population. On top of that, immigrant cultures in Europe have much higher birth rates and could over take the native cultures in a generation or two. This worries me, because the European people are wonderful, and I don’t want them to disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the immigrant cultures, without them, Europe would be in even worse shape. Still, I hope traditional Europe is around for many generations to come, or at least for the rest of my lifetime. I did some research, and birth rates in Europe are increasing, so it looks like the trend is slowly reversing. It seems like an easy problem to fix. I mean Rome is filled with attractive young European women, how hard can it be to get them all pregnant? If by chance you are a European woman reading this right now, stop, go get pregnant, then come back and read the rest. Thanks.

After our vatican tour, we ate lunch and then headed back to St. Peter’s basilica to climb the dome. Unfortunaly, we had to wait in the security line, but it’s much shorter in the afternoon. Here is a picture of part of the staircase heading to the top of the dome.

Here is a picture of St. Peter’s square from the top of the dome with Rome in the background.

Here is a picture of the back part of the Vatican. Visitors aren’t allowed to go there, it’s where they have secret Pope meetings.

Here is the platform on top of the dome and all the people taking pictures.

After the climbing down from the dome, we walked to the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary. There are lots of stray cat’s in Rome. Something about italians not believing in sterilizing their cats. The Torre Argentina sanctuary has a little section of ancient ruins where the cats can live, and the sanctuary gives them food, water, and shots. The people that work in the sanctuary are wonderful wonderful people. You should go to the link above and donate. The cat below is Earl’s italian cousin. While all the other cats were sleeping, he was running and jumping from ledge to ledge. It was actually really hard to get this picture.

Here are more cats among the ruins.

The cat sanctuary is pretty close to the Pantheon, so we headed there next to see the inside this time. The Pantheon is (I think) the only ancient Roman building that has survived all this time in pretty much it’s original condition. At some point it was converted into a catholic church. Here is the inside.

Remember that great restaurant in front of the Pantheon that I talked about last time. Here is a view from our table, that’s my glass of red wine. I don’t know why, but wine tasted so much better in Italy. Maybe it was the atmosphere, but it seems like they serve it at the perfect temperature, or decanted it, or something. It was good, I wish I knew why.

Day 2 is now concluded. Tomorrow we travel by train to Florence. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Hey look! Roseyland is back. I know, you’re excited, totally understandable. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and now, I’m going to tell you all about it. I loved the blog post I wrote about my trip to London & Paris last year. You can read them here. I shouldn’t admit this, but I go back and read those post every few months or so. It’s a great way to revisit the experience. Naturally, I now have to do the same thing for my Italy trip.

Where to start? How about food. Ahhh the Italian food. It’s nothing like the picture below. This picture was taken in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. They have great BBQ in the Charlotte airport. See that thing that looks like a giant french fry? That’s a fried pickle, and it’s awesome. I went to Italy with my Aunt (from Nebraska) and my Mom (from South Carolina). I arranged it so that we could meet up in Charlotte and fly to Rome together. This was our last meal before boarding our 9 hour flight.

After a couple hours in the airport, we boarded US Airways Flight #720 from Charlotte to Rome. This was on an Airbus 330. The picture below is from my seat. During the flight I was constantly comparing the US Airways Airbus 330 to the American Airlines Boeing 777 that I flew on to London last year. At first I liked the 777 a lot better, because it was a bigger aircraft and felt roomier inside, but the 330 grew on me. It might be a tad smaller, but the 777 had 5 middle seats, which means some poor sap get’s stuck with two people between him and the aisle. That would suck. Also, US Airways has a better in flight entertainment system than American airlines. I say this because the movies are truly on demand in that you can start them whenever you want, on American, they just play in continuous loops, and you have to catch the movies when they start. That being said, US Airways didn’t have a situational display that would show you where the aircraft currently was and how fast you were flying. Although I think the TSA might have made all airlines get rid of those.

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get any sleep during the flight. I did watch three movies though. When In Rome, Date Night, and something else that for the life of me I can’t remember. I’m sure it was really good though. By the way, the fountain in the movie When In Rome, it’s not a real fountain. You can’t find it in Rome, so don’t go looking for it, that would be a total waste of time.

Upon arrival we went through customs. The italian customs process is much less strenuous than the UK customs process. The UK will have you fill out a form and ask you a few questions, the Italians, they look at you and stamp your passport. Which is fine by me, because it’s a lot faster. Since there were three of us, I decided to rent a short term apartment for our stay. I was a little nervous about this, because I like the connivence and security of a hotel, but this apartment got good reviews on Flipkey.com and it was about the price of one hotel room. It all worked out well and the apartment people were nice enough to arrange a private driver for us from the airport for €50. Below is a picture of our apartment’s living room. There were also two bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and a terrace that you had to take this tiny spiral staircase to get to.

All in all our apartment was pretty nice, but you did have to go up these steps to get to it. Not only that, before these steps there are three more flights of steps and these two weird metal gates that had to be unlocked to get in or out. The locks were strange too, I don’t know how, but they functioned differently from american locks, and it stressed me out every time I had to deal with them.

After settling into our apartment, we headed out to see Rome and get oriented. Below is a picture of Piazza del Popolo This piazza was pretty close to our apartment and we ate lunch at a ristorante here. I had some type of risotto. It was good. After walking around for a bit, we realized that it was just too hot and we were too tired to keep going, so we heading back to the apartment for a short nap until it cooled off a little.

Later in the evening, we headed out again. Our first stop, the Spanish Steps as seen in the picture below. Lots of people here. See those guys with flowers, they are really annoying. If you are female, they insist that you take a flower (because you’re beautiful of course), then if you take one and nobody pays for it after a few seconds, they take it back. I believe these are mostly illegal immigrants. Every once in a while the police show up and they go running, but they come back just a few minutes later. It’s like this weird game they and the police play that nobody ever wins. Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with this kind of activity too much in Rome, I thought it was a lot worse in Paris last year.

This is the Fontana della Barcaccia that sits at the base of the Spanish steps. Supposedly the water streaming into the fountain is drinkable, and I did see people drink it. I was not that brave however.

After the Spanish Steps we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. Pictures don’t do this fountain justice. It’s beautiful, and huge, and I wanted to swim in it. This area was also packed with people trying to see the fountain. There is a video of this fountain on my Flickr page, you should check it out.

Next we headed towards the Pantheon and ate dinner somewhere along the way. The Pantheon was closed, but it still looks pretty impressive on the outside.

This is the piazza in front of the Pantheon. I think this might be my favorite place in Rome. See that ristorante on the right with the yellow table cloths and brown wicker chairs? That was our favorite restaurant in Rome. We ate there twice. The guide books will tell you to avoid the restaurants on the main piazzas, because they tend to be tourist traps, and they are probably right, but tourist trap or not, I loved this restaurant. The waitress was super friendly, there is a great view of the piazza and the people, with the Pantheon in the background. Music was always playing from somewhere, and the food was great. On a nice night, it’s just amazing. If you ever want to go sometime, I’ll buy dinner.

This is Piazza Navona. Somehow I thought this would be a bigger deal, because it looks like a big deal on the map. It was cool, but there were a lot of other piazzas I liked better. Like that one in front of the Pantheon I just talked about.

After a lot of walking, we got gelato at the famous Giolitti. It was very good. I had chocolate and carmel with whipped cream. Their chocolate chip (called stracciatella) is also very popular. A quick side note, at the bars and gelato places in Italy, you pay first at the cashier, who gives you a receipt, then you take the receipt to the bar where you order your food. So don’t just go up to the bar and order food, you’ll look like a silly tourist, but they’ll still be nice to you. Also, bar doesn’t mean bar, bar means counter service like restaurant where you can get coffee, pastries, sandwiches, etc…

That’s it, day 1 is over. Tomorrow we tour the Vatican, hopefully we’ll be over our jet lag by then. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.

Now that health care reform is done, settled, and assured to never be an issue again (#sarcasm), I’m writing one last health care reform post. This debate has taken a toll on me. There are a few people out there whom I thought I would always hold in highest regard, and well, now I don’t. They probably feel the same way about me. Oh well, that’s life.

This is my problem. I love systems. I love to analyze systems. I like to break them down into parts, understand how the parts interact, and look for potential improvements. Few things make me happier than a clean elegant design. Not so simple as to be ineffective, and not so complex as to be inefficient. I don’t care who comes up with it, when I see a well designed system, I get excited.

Nothing excites me about the United States health care system. It’s ridiculously complex. Look at the chart above. The U.S. spends 45% more on health care than any other country. Our health care is not 45% better. No, seriously, it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, the U.S. has world class health care capabilities, but our distribution system sucks.

Most people in the U.S. get some form of group insurance from their employer. I contend that this is “socialized” health care, because everyone in the group pays the same rate regardless of their sex, age, or state of health. If you leave your job, you can continue your health care for up to 18 month under COBRA. If you are self employed or your employer doesn’t offer a group plan, you can buy an individual insurance plan. This will probably cost you more for less coverage, and if you have a pre-existing condition, you will likely be denied coverage. If you are over 65, you can get Medicare, which is a government run single payer system. If you are poor or have certain disabilities, you might be able to get Medicaid, which is a system run by individual state governments. There are a number of different insurance companies, and a number of different health care providers. Every employer negotiates it’s own rates with insurance companies, and every insurance company negotiates it’s own rates with health care providers. In addition, every state has a unique set of regulations that insurance plans must abide by. To summarize, in the United States, we have employer provided group insurance plans, individual insurance plans, COBRA, Medicare, Medicaid, and a big giant patchwork of regulations.

Do you know what the U.K. has? The National Health Service (NHS). None of this one plan for you, another plan for you, or one rate for this insurance company at this provider, and another for another. They have the NHS, and that’s it. It doesn’t matter how old you are, who you work for, or what health conditions you have, you are covered by the NHS. I am sure the U.K.’s system isn’t perfect, no system is, and I do not think the U.K.’s system would be a good model for the U.S., but…. You have to admit, the U.K.’s system is exponentially simpler than the U.S. system, and it essentially produces the same results. This is a big reason the U.K. bar on the chart above is nearly half the size of the U.S. bar.

If I were King of the World, and I should be, I would transition the U.S. away from employer provided health insurance. Employer provided group insurance plans are by far the best health care options in the U.S. I love the insurance my employer provides, and I feel very grateful to have a job I enjoy with an employer that can provide me with said insurance. Still, I would rather not have my health insurance tied to my employer, and I don’t think the fact that I work for a fairly large company means I deserve better insurance than someone who is self employed or works for a small business. We should work towards taking the structure and benefits of employer provided group insurance plans and extending them to the country as one big group. To me, this is by far the most rational and “common sense” approach. It keeps the best aspects of our current system and simplifies it at the same time.

The recently passed Health Care Reform Bill isn’t perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least it’s a step in a direction, which is actually pretty amazing at this point. I can’t say that it does much to simplify the current system, but it does fix the pre-existing condition issue and I am hopeful that the national insurance exchange will lead to nation wide group insurance plans similar to what large employers provide today.

The thing that’s frustrating about all this is that I get the feeling nobody really cares about anything I just said. Few people want to analyze our system, compare it to other systems, think of potential improvements, and evaluate the pros and cons. Most people just want to agree with the people around them. People are tribal, they perceive themselves as being members of a particular team, and that membership comes with a whole host of emotional entanglements. People love drama. People don’t make decisions based on a sincere attempt to understand reality, they just do what feels good. I realize that ranting about irrational and imaginary fears brings about certain emotional rewards, but those rewards have very real costs. I’m tired of paying those costs.

Okay, end rant. I’m never discussing healthcare again.

I bought my car 7 years ago. It’s a 2003 Honda Accord. I know, pretty exciting huh? The Honda Accord fits me perfectly. It’s a quality reliable car, and it’s not overly flashy. There is nothing about my Honda Accord that suggest I want to impress you or that I have anything to compensate for, and that’s how I like it. One of my favorite features of my car is the steering wheel stereo controls. Here is a picture of them.

The controls are a little dirty. That’s what happens when you touch something for 7 years. These controls let me adjust the volume, change the station/CD, and switch between FM/AM/CD all without taking my hands off the steering wheel or my eyes off the road. Awesome. In my old car, I didn’t have steering wheel stereo controls. Those were dark days.

A couple years after I bought my car, I got my first iPod. I didn’t think I would like an iPod that much, but like most new technologies, you don’t know you need it until you have it. It wasn’t long before I wanted my iPod to work with my car stereo. I did some research, but it seamed like the only option was an FM transmitter. I tried this on a few road trips, and FM transmitters work okay in the middle of nowhere, but not in cities. I also wanted a more permanent and clean solution that would let me store my iPod out of sight.

Eventually I found the Denison Ice Link. This was an adapter that connected to my iPod to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Basically, it made my iPod act like a CD changer. When I hit the +/- Disc buttons on my stereo, the iPod would switch playlist, and the steering wheel controls would let me move up and down tracks and adjust the volume. It was wonderful. I now had an almost endless supply of music in my car at my fingertips. Not only that, this opened up the world of podcast to me. I love podcast. They are like talk radio, only not stupid. Currently my favorite podcast are The K&K podcast, The 404, and This American Life.

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. After 5 years of faithful service, my iPod died. It had been acting a little weird for a few months, and then I think the extreme cold weather in St. Louis this January finished it off. I did some research, and the Denison Ice Link adapter in my car did not work with the newer iPods. Denison had newer adapters, but they no longer sold their products in the USA. Interesting. I tried to listen to the radio, but after a few days I couldn’t take it anymore. There is hardly any music on the music stations, and those 97.1 people, nuts, completely nuts (except the Dave Glover show, I like the Dave Glover show).

I did some more digging, and I found the USA SPEC PA15-HON2. This adapter makes iPods appear as a CD changer to my stereo like the Denison Ice Link, but it works with all of the new iPods and even the iPhone. It got good reviews on Amazon, so I bought the PA15-HON2 along with a new iPod nano (purple, I like purple). This cost me over $300 total, but I was desperate for my old life back.

Getting to the back of my car stereo is a little tricky. The first time I did this, I was fortunate to find a great post with pictures of a very similar install that somebody did. I couldn’t find the post again though, so this time I had to go from memory. I figured I’d post pictures of the process, in case somebody else out there wants to try something similar. The standard disclaimer applies: follow my instructions/advice at your own risk. I don’t know what the “right” way to do any of this is.

First, here is the inside of my car. The stereo is in the center, and below the stereo is a storage compartment with a silver door that slides back. This is where I’d like to put my iPod.

Here is the storage compartment with the door open. The cable is the old cable that attached my old iPod to the old adapter.

The first step is to remove the rubber liner from the ashtray shaped compartment that is labeled “Not An Ashtray”. It is held in by sticky glue, and you can pull it out fairly easily.

He is the rubber liner removed.

Under the rubber liner there is a plastic liner that is held in by clips. I removed it by prying a couple small screw drivers under it, and popping it up. You don’t really have to worry about scratching it, because it is covered by the rubber liner.

Here is the plastic liner removed.

Next, you have to remove the trim around that stick that let’s you switch between Park-Neutral-Drive-Reverse. What is that thing called anyways. You have to be more careful here, because you probably don’t want to scratch this part. The trim is held in by six clips (three evenly spaced along each side). I slid a screwdriver under each side and popped the trim up near each clip. You can kind of tell where they are when you do this.

Here is the trim piece removed.

In the ashtray like compartment, you can see two screws. Remove these and try not to lose the screws. Once you remove the screws, you can pull out the piece containing the ashtray like compartment and cigarette lighter. I just let it hang over to the side and out of the way.

Now there are two more screws at the bottom of the storage compartment. Remove these, and now the compartment is only held in by two clips on each side near the top of the compartment. Removing the compartment is a little tricky. You don’t want to force it, but you do have to apply a little force and pull at just the right angle. Just keep playing with it, and it will come out. Don’t get frustrated at this point, or you’ll do something stupid and break something, and that would suck, because Honda probably charges an arm and a leg for these parts.

With the storage compartment removed, we can get to the CD changer connection on the bottom of the stereo. This is also where the XM radio would attach if I had XM. The CD changer connection is the white female connector in the picture below.

Here is another view of the underside of the stereo and the CD changer connection from farther back.

I’d like the PA15-HON2 and my iPod to go inside the storage compartment, so I need a way run cables from the stereo into the storage compartment. It’s just a plastic box, so I drilled a hole into the top of it. The hole in the picture below was for the old adapter cable, and it was a little too small for the new cable.

I took the storage compartment up to my condo and drilled a bigger hole. I didn’t have a drill bit big enough for a nice round hole, so I just drilled a few small holes and then pulled it apart with some pliers. The result wasn’t pretty, but it’s out of sight, so I didn’t care. The cat loves to help.

Back in the car, I attached the new adapter cable to the CD changer connection of my car stereo. Like so.

Then I ran the cable into the storage compartment, connected it to the PA15-HON2 adapter, and then connected the adapter to my new iPod nano. I also tested it at this point, because it would suck to put everything back together and find out that it doesn’t work.

Once I knew everything was working, I put it all back together. Basically you just reverse everything you did to take it all apart. The only tricky part is getting the storage compartment back in place. You have to slide it in at just the right angle. I lined up the screw holes at the bottom of the compartment, and then pushed on the upper part until the clips slid into place. It took a few minutes to get the storage compartment back in it’s proper place. Also, the door of the compartment probably won’t open and close right until you reattach the screws, but once you reattach the screws, make sure you test the door. If you put everything back into place and the door isn’t right, you’ll have to remove it all again to get the door right. The picture below shows everything back together with the adapter and iPod neatly tucked inside the storage compartment.

Here it is after the install with the storage compartment closed. See, you can’t even tell I have an iPod in there. I love it this way, nice, clean, and simple.

I love the new adapter. I set up 6 playlist named HONDA1-6 on my iPod, and I can switch between them using the Disc +/- buttons on my stereo. “Disc 7″ lets me flip though all of the music on my iPod, and “Disc 8″ is a direct mode where I can use the iPod controls to select music. The adapter also charges my iPod. The only problem I have had is that once direct mode locked up my iPod and I had to reset it. This only happened once though, and I don’t plan on using direct mode very often.

As a bonus, the adapter even works with my iPhone. When you connect the iPhone, the iPhone says that the accessory is not compatible with the iPhone, but if you just click OK, it works. You can access playlist on the iPhone just like the iPod, and you can even listen to internet radio using the WunderRadio iPhone app. I tested it, and I listened to BBC Radio 1 and Le Mouv’ Radio (France) in my car. That’s so cool.

I’m going to finish this off with a video of my current favorite song. It’s Fireflies by Owl City. If you don’t love this song, something is wrong with you. Enjoy.

Yeah, so I blogged every day in November and not once in December. I have a number of excuses, but none of them are very good. In order to get back into the swing of things, let me try an easy blog post to update you on all things Roseyland. God bless the bulleted list:

• I put up a Christmas tree for the first time this year. I actually liked it a lot more than I thought I would. It felt like Christmas lasted for the whole month of December rather than just a day or two. Plus, it became a project where I had to make measurements, comparison shop, and then buy accessories. These are the things I truly love.
• I travelled to Florida to visit family for New Year’s. It was fun, but it should have been warmer. I think the state of Florida owes me a refund.
• I’m on a diet. I weighed myself after New Year’s and discovered that I weighed more than I have ever weighed. Go me! My BMI is about 28. Last year it was 24. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at losing weight. I watch my calories, work out, and magically I’m thinner. This time I’m using myfitnesspal.com. This is a website that let’s you track your daily calorie intake and calories burned from exercise. They have a large database of foods and exercises, and even an iPhone app. The website calculates how many calories you should eat to lose a certain amount of weight, and then as you enter food or exercise during the day, it lets you know how many calories you have left. I think the technical term is “Easy-Peasy”. I’m going for a loss of 2 pounds per week. I’ve lost 5 pounds in the first week, that never keeps up though. You can follow my progress by checking out the badge over on the right.
• I’m reading SuperFreakonomics. The book Freakonomics is the closest thing I have to a bible, and SuperFreakonomics is just as good, if not better. Freakonomics is basically an economist analysis of the world. I love these books because they show how many of our preconceived notions are just plain wrong. I think these books should be required reading for anyone who wants to have an opinion. I also recommend anything by Malcolm Gladwell.
• I’m pretty sure that I’m going to Italy in June with my Mom, Aunt, and maybe a cousin or two. After going to London and Paris last summer, I’m afraid that I want to see the whole World, and by the whole World I mean Europe and Australia. My plan is to fly to Rome and stay in a vacation rental apartment. We will have 5 full days in which I would like to see: The Vatican, Ancient Rome, Ostia Antica, Tivoli, and maybe even a day in Florence. I’ve also been learning Italian on livemocha.com.
• I need you to watch Chuck. It’s one of the best shows on TV and if it get’s canceled, I’ll cry. You don’t want that do you? It’s on NBC, Monday night, 7C/8E. You can watch previous episodes on Hulu. I’m also watching Big Love on HBO, which is another one of my favorite shows.
• My Mom and Grandpa had an interesting discussion about healthcare over New Year’s. I stayed out of it, but it did make me think of a couple things. One being that we are all part of a system, and every “personal freedom” you take affects the “personal freedoms” available to others. The other thought I had was about complexity. There are a million different ways you can analyze our heath care issues, but the ultimate problem is that our health care system has grown into a very very complex system. The only way we will get out of this mess is to transition to a significantly less complex system. I can’t say that the current health care reform bill accomplishes this, but it still has my support. Partly because it does fix some significant flaws in our current system (pre-existing conditions, benefit caps), and partly because I think this is the best first step we are going to get at this point. This would be a good topic for a whole blog post, maybe I’ll write one.

That is all. I’ll write a real blog post soon. I promise.

Image Credit : Elizabeth

Well, it looks like I have successfully survived NaBloPoMo 2009. I hope you didn’t enjoy my blog too much, because I don’t think I’ll be posting again for at least a couple weeks. All in all, it wasn’t that bad, and I’m glad I did it, but it was definitely a challenge to make sure I left time for blogging every day. Here is what I learned:

• When I’m in a time crunch, the first thing I cut out is sleep. This is not a terrific strategy.
• If you are looking to buy an artificial Christmas tree, you should do so before Thanksgiving, they seem to be popular this time of year.
• The same goes for those miniature Starbucks cup Christmas tree ornaments.
• The previous two list items have very little to do with NaBloPoMo.
• Onedadslife’s experimental physics skills are somewhat lacking.
• I can blog from my iPhone.
• Epcot needs an India pavilion. Yeah, um, I didn’t get around to blogging about this, but I wanted too.
• The best way to save time blogging is to write shorter post, and lots of times they are better that way.

That’s it. I learned nothing else. I wish I could say that my writing has improved significantly, but it hasn’t. I also wish I could say that my writing speed has increased, and actually, it has a little. Probably the best thing that came out of NaBloPoMo is that now I have a fairly long list of potential blogging topics. If only I could find someone to write post on these topics. I really wish I could think of something profound to say to end this whole NaBloPoMo experiment, but mostly I just want to be done. So I guess I’m done. If I don’t talk to you before then, have a Merry Christmas!!! (or Hanukah, or Kwanzaa, or Winter Festival of Lights). The End.

Image Credit: Patrick Edwin Moran - Wikimedia Commons

I’m sure you are familiar with Thomas Young’s Double Slit Experiment. I mean, who isn’t? In case you missed that day of modern physics in college, you can watch the video below to review.

Basically, if you shine light through one slit, the light acts like a particle, but if you shine light through two slits, it acts like a wave. What’s even stranger, is that if you shine one photon at a time towards two slits, it still acts like a wave. Even though it’s just one particle. But wait, there’s more! If you shine light at two slits, but you set up a detector to see which slit the light travels through, the light goes back to acting like a particle. It appears that light changes it’s behavior depending on how you observe it. Weird.

I want you to do a new experiment for me. Create two screens where when a photon hits the screen, a blip appears so that you know where the photon hit the screen. In one of these screens, cut out two slits. Then put the screen with the double slit in front of the other screen and shine a light, one photon at a time, towards the double slit. If the photon does not go through one of the slits, you will see a blip on the first screen. If it does go through one of the slits on the first screen, you will not see a blip on the first screen, but you will see a blip on the second screen. Repeat this experiment many times keeping track of the location of the blips on the second screen, then let me know what pattern appears. Will it be a wave interference pattern, or single particle created bands? My guess is an interference pattern. For bonus points, make the first double slit screen some type of powered detector that only detects photons when it’s on. Then turn it on and off to see if it changes the pattern on the second screen.

I know what you are thinking. Isn’t this like that experiment that has already been done where they put detectors in front of both slits of a double slit? NO!!!! The key to my experiment is that we detect whether or not a photon goes through a slit, but we have no information as to which slit it went through. If we knew which slit it went through, it would obviously act like a particle. Duh!

It is possible that this experiment, or an equivalent experiment, has already been performed. If so, please send me the results. If not, please perform the experiment and let me know what the pattern on the second screen is. The first person to provide me with results that are to my satisfaction wins a $10 gift card to either Runza or Sonny’s BBQ. Your choice.